The development of mobile communication devices and mobile networks has advanced at a rapid rate. At first, analog mobile networks enabled voice communication and simple paging features. Later, digital mobile networks provided more advanced features for voice and data communication, such as encryption, caller identification and short message service (SMS) text messages. More recently, third generation (3G) mobile IP network technology is being developed to enable users to easily access content rich media, information and entertainment with mobile devices.
As mobile devices and mobile networks have advanced, and more data has become available to the users, the demand on the networks has continued to increase. The increase in demand can cause a network to become heavily congested.
One way that has been used to attempt to alleviate congestion on a network is to add more bandwidth. This approach, however, has many drawbacks. Adding more bandwidth is expensive and does not ensure that a network will not become congested. Eventually, all of the available bandwidth will be utilized from the increased demand.
What is needed is a way to simply determine when a new flow should be accepted into the network in order to avoid congestion. It is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.